The Echo Room Read online

  Rett turned and collapsed against the door, panting, thirstier than ever.

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to come help us,” Bryn said, her shoulders tense.

  Rett reached to touch her arm, trying to comfort her. “At least we’re not alone.”

  She leaned back, just out of his reach. Why is she staring at my boots? Rett wondered. He looked down and was stuck by how clean and white they were. No trace of dirt on them. His gaze moved to the prints on the floor between them, and the trail leading down the hallway. She figured it out. She knows I didn’t leave those prints.

  “I’m going to look for a way to turn on the water, like you said,” Bryn mumbled, and backed out of the space.

  Rett’s heart thudded. His own words echoed in his head: At least we’re not alone.

  He watched her walk to the other end of the depot and disappear through a doorway.

  She doesn’t trust me. I’m in this alone.

  His heart squeezed. No one’s coming to help us, and Bryn doesn’t trust me. I have to figure this out myself.

  The muffled thud of his boots echoed in his ears as he walked back to the main room. The scratches on the floor caught his eye again. He remembered what Bryn had said about using a ladder to get up to the skylight. And there, next to the glass dome brightening overhead—was that a handle?

  The skylight opens.

  A ladder—he needed a ladder.

  The one set over the couch to his right was too short, and anyway, it was mounted to the wall. He ducked under the half-lifted wall to his left to see if he might find a better ladder in the room beyond.

  Junk spilled out of cabinets and over the floor: backpacks and first-aid kits and coils of rope. On top of a cabinet was another short ladder, bolted to the wall. Useless. Maybe he’d have more luck in the room above?

  He climbed the rungs, trying not feel uneasy about entering the dark opening overhead. At the top, he fumbled for the glow tube in his pocket, then bent the plastic like Bryn had told him to so it cracked and glowed with green light.

  The room held only a few beds and a bank of drawers.

  No ladder. He let out a sigh of frustration.

  He was about to head back down to the supply room and come up with another idea when the light from his glow tube hit on something on a top bunk. He climbed up to find an object half-tucked under the pillow: a long black talon.

  He turned it over in his hands. It reminded him of a set of fake dinosaur fossils he’d had as a kid, before Walling Home. His mother had found them under a layer of dust on the grocery store shelf, next to dented cans of beets that were the only thing left to buy when they finally got to the front of the line. She walked Rett to the park and cleared away some of the garbage that people had taken to dumping there when the trucks had stopped coming into their neighborhood to pick it up, and then she hid the fossils in the sand for Rett to dig up. Rett marveled at the process of lifting them out and fitting them into their proper shapes. He heard his mother’s voice clearly in his mind even now, listing the names of the bones: tibia, vertebrae, scapula. Magical words, the way she said them; and magic, how they all fit together. The world outside their dig site had faded, the rotting garbage, the roaming dogs, the blackening trees …

  But the talon in his hand now wasn’t plastic, wasn’t fake.

  So many strange pieces to this odd place. He just had to fit the puzzle together.

  He ran a finger along the grooved side of the talon, tested the point. A spot of blood welled on his fingertip. The sight of it awakened a sense of foreboding.

  He slipped it back under the pillow, feeling oddly guilty for having moved it. A sudden urge to get away from it overtook him, but as he shifted to jump down from the bed, he spotted letters scratched into the metal wall: G. W. was here. And underneath, a string of numbers. At first he thought the numbers were a date, but the last digits were too high to be the year.

  “Maybe it’s the number of days the last guy was trapped in here,” he mumbled to himself, and then wished he hadn’t thought of that.

  The next moment, as if by magic, a humming and a sudden spill of light came from the opening in the floor. Rett slid down from the bed to investigate and discovered that the overhead lights in the supply room had come on. Bryn must have found a way to turn the power on.

  That’s one piece of the puzzle solved. He climbed down the ladder and ducked into the main room, where he discovered more lights adding to the glow from the skylight.

  “Bryn?”

  A strange sound of metal clattering against wood answered him. It came from the room where he and Bryn had found the gun. Rett followed it.

  Bryn stood next to a folded partition, staring at what looked like a hospital bed surrounded by glass cabinets. She turned to Rett, horror in her eyes. “Something happened here, didn’t it?” She put a hand to her head. “Do you remember?”

  Rett touched his own head, probed along his skull until he found what he knew he would find: the raised line of a long scar.

  A flurry of images passed through his mind: needles and flashing metal and an angular face set with grim determination.

  He saw the face before him now, and a white lab coat—a woman turning from the bed to tell him something. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, just the buzz of a drill or a saw—

  It’s not real, Rett told himself, clenching his eyes shut. It’s just me and Bryn here, no one else.

  He opened his eyes to find the visions gone. He touched Bryn’s shoulder, trying to anchor himself. She flinched away.

  Blood dripped from her fist onto the floor.

  “Bryn, you’re bleeding.” He reached for her hand, but she jerked back.

  “I can take care of myself,” she barked, and bolted from the room.

  Rett lingered, rooted by anxiety. Over the blood on Bryn’s hand, and the way she had recoiled from him. Over the sight of the hospital bed.

  He turned back toward it, wondering if he really had lain there or if the images passing through his mind again were memories of some other place. A shape on the floor caught his eye: a nylon backpack. He’d seen identical packs in the jumble of supplies in the other room. How did you get in here? Unease settled over him. The same way those boots prints got all over the floor: someone was here.

  His glow stick reflected on something inside the open pack. He jerked at the zipper. The words DRINKING WATER met his sight.

  In a moment, water was from pouring from a Mylar pouch down his parched throat. He reached for another—

  But a thought popped into his head: Water. A water line.

  That’s what that chalky mark was.

  He hauled the pack with him into the main room. Bryn was nowhere in sight. She must have gone into the supply room again, probably making use of the first-aid kits Rett had seen in there earlier. He wanted to tell her about the water pouches he’d found, but first he looked up at what he had seen when he’d first awakened: a chalky mark up near the top of the wall. A water line.

  The place had filled with water once.

  Could he make it fill up again?

  He eyed the handle next to the skylight. If the place filled with water, he could float up to the skylight, open the glass …

  And they’d be free.

  He took in the evidence around him with new eyes. The doorway to the office was lined with rubber. Now that he looked at the walls to the lounge and the supply room, he saw that they, too, were lined to keep out water. And down at the base of the walls … Rett crouched to prod at a tiny panel. Out popped a small metal nozzle.

  I’m right. This room was made to flood.

  I just have to figure out how to get the water going.

  A familiar phrase popped into his head: One, bloody jumpsuit. Two, parched throat. And then: the image of a lever mounted to a wall. Where?

  The ladder in the lounge pulled at his attention. The lever. He dropped the pack and started climbing.

  The room at the top was dark. Gues
s no one left the light switch on in here. But Rett still had his glow tube. He held it up to the wall, and there it was: a lever, labeled with what looked like a rain cloud. It yielded when he pushed down on it, but only a little. He leaned all his weight on it. Something moved behind the wall and a clunk came from the roof.

  “What, that’s it?” he asked the empty room. He swept the light tube along the wall, and at the same time ran his hands over the cool metal, searching.

  His fingers brushed something: a button. Just like the one downstairs: marked with a row of three overlapping circles …

  … and a wavy line.

  Rett’s finger hovered over the button. The one downstairs hadn’t worked. But then, neither had the lights. Now that the power was on—

  He pushed the button.

  An alarm echoed through the matrix of rooms, a throaty bleat that made Rett duck in panic.

  What did I do? He flew down the ladder. The lounge’s huge wall was swinging down to seal off the room. Rett caught a flash of something white on its underside—gouges in the metal? The sight only made him move faster, jolted him to launch himself under the wall just before it slid home.

  The alarm still blared, and to his right, the office door slid shut. Clunking noises from the corridor to his left told him the changing rooms were also sealing themselves off. I did it—the room is going to flood.

  “What’s happening?” Bryn shouted over the ringing alarm. Behind her, the supply room wall was doing its best to close as the lounge wall had. But it seemed to be stuck in its half-open position.

  “I pushed a button,” Rett shouted back to Bryn. Her frown dampened his excitement. Maybe I should have thought this through a little longer.

  The sound of rushing water interrupted his thoughts. A milky-white wave swept over the floor. High up on the wall, near the ceiling, a panel lit up, showing a warning sign:

  Do not drink, Rett thought.

  The water lapped over his feet, cold and stinking of minerals.

  “How do we make it stop?” Bryn shouted.

  “We don’t.” Rett pointed up at the skylight. “We float up there and open this place up.”

  “What?” The pitch of her voice suddenly filled him with doubt. She craned her neck while he sweated over whether he’d done something clever or incredibly stupid. His head spun. The sharp smell of sulfur made him want to gag.

  “There’s a ledge up there,” Bryn announced, her voice wavering like she still didn’t trust his plan. “People-sized.”

  Rett had missed it, but Bryn was right: a long shelf hung just under the glass and off to one side. “We can get on there and open the skylight! Can you swim?”

  “So glad you asked after pushing the swim-or-die button.”

  Guilt stabbed at Rett. “Please say yes.”

  “Yes, but this water smells terrible.”

  The water had now reached their knees and was still rising. The alarm bleated on, sending waves of pain through Rett’s head.

  “What’s that?” Bryn shouted over the alarm.

  Rett followed her gaze to the backpack he had left on the floor. Bryn rushed to pick it up. Water dripped from the open flap.

  “I found it in the other room.” Rett jerked his head at the door that now sealed the office.

  Bryn rummaged in the pack. She brought out a small device, slick with water.

  A phone? Rett felt sick. Whatever it was, it was ruined.

  “Why did you leave the pack on the floor?” Bryn demanded, her expression a mixture of confusion and alarm.

  “I didn’t know there were phones in there.” Idiot, Rett scolded himself. Why didn’t you look through the pack earlier? But he’d been so eager to find that lever, to turn on the water and get out of this place. “It doesn’t matter anyway. We’re getting out of here. We don’t need phones. Or whatever they are.” This nightmare’s almost over.

  The water sloshed at their waists, rose to their necks. They pumped their arms and legs, working to stay afloat as the water level climbed over the slide-away wall of the lounge. Rett kept his eyes on the shelf overhead, trying to make sense of the marking.

  Bryn spotted it, too. “What is that?”

  Two painted wavy lines marked the underside of the ledge, along with a familiar symbol: a row of three overlapping circles. Almost the same as the symbol that marked the buttons now submerged in the rooms below. Except these circles weren’t quite round, and the uneven way they overlapped made Rett think of the segmented body of … some sort of creature? Rett thought of the talon he’d found in one of the sleeping rooms. Dread mixed with the panic still bubbling in his stomach. Was this some kind of joke?

  The alarm silenced. Rett thought the water might have stopped rising, too. He reached for the shelf, but he could barely get his fingers over the edge. “Not high enough.”

  “The other wall never closed,” Bryn said, her voice quiet now above the slap of water against the walls. “That room must be full of water by now.”

  Rett kicked hard, willing himself to rise higher in the water. His legs felt oddly strong and powerful, almost as if they belonged to someone else, someone who hadn’t always been small for his age and prone to spending all his time sitting around drawing comics. Must be my steely resolve not to die. He managed to get a hand over the ledge and then swing the other one over and pull himself up to safety.

  He reached down for Bryn. She went on treading water, making no move to accept his help. Rett couldn’t tell if she didn’t notice his hand or if she preferred staying in the putrid water to making physical contact with him. Finally, she gave him a wary glance, then gripped his wrist. A memory surfaced: her palm sliding to fit against his, a trail of freckles across the back of her hand. But then he was pulling her up onto the ledge next to him, and in a moment she slid her fingers out of his grip.

  They lay on the shelf, panting. Rett rolled over to look through the skylight. Raindrops dotted the glass, and beyond them—gray sky, up and up forever.

  “The handle,” Bryn said.

  Rett reached a stiff arm for the crank next to the skylight. “If you want to go your separate way after this, I won’t blame you. But I swear I didn’t ruin those phones on purpose.”

  “I’m not going back to Walling.” Bryn coughed, desperate for the clean air they were moments from breathing. “I’ve already missed out on the big-screen experience for too many new Star Wars movies.”

  She offered him a smile that felt like an uneasy truce.

  Rett went on cranking. “Lightsaber duels weren’t meant for shoddy internet connections.”

  The skylight lifted with a pop.

  6:27 A.M.

  Rett kept cranking until the glass dome had lifted away. He struggled to pull himself up into the cool open air, feet planted on the ledge.

  Finally, fresh air. The pain and fear and thirst pounding in his head gave way to relief. Rain fell on his face, and the chill cleared away the mineral stench lingering in his nose. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the faraway sight before him so that he could make sense of where he was.

  And then his panic returned.

  He wasn’t in a medical center. Wasn’t even in a city.

  He was in a wasteland.

  The ruts and spines of crumbling buttes stretched in every direction. He could find no glimpse of green, no sign of life for miles all around. Only the striations on the faces of canyons and cliffs offered any variation to the landscape. It was like looking out at a stone sea. Wave after petrified wave.

  No.

  This can’t be happening.

  Bryn drew up next to him. She turned to take in the full view of stark ridges and pale rock. A strangled noise sounded in her throat. “Where are we?”

  Rett shook his head. He couldn’t speak. His gaze swept over the bleached hollows, the grooved and weathered rock sloping down into sandy crevices. He felt as if he were looking at the world dissolving.

  He seemed to be dissolving himself, his insides crumbling.
“I have to get to my mom. I—” Panic choked his voice.

  “What are we doing here?” Bryn asked the wasteland before her.

  Rett scanned the rocky shelves, but there were no signs of roads, no break in the buttes, which stretched to the horizon.

  They were alone in the middle of a wasteland.

  “I can’t be here,” he said. “This can’t be real.”

  The rain fell harder. It drummed on the metal roof. Bryn stood still as a statue, water running off her jumpsuit in rivulets. Rett wondered if she could see something out in the wasteland that he couldn’t. She seemed to be noting every spire and ridge.

  He slowly turned as he looked out over the horizon. “Bryn, look.”

  Bryn turned to see what he pointed at: a river. “Water,” she croaked.

  But how do we get down from here? Rett turned and inspected the outer shell of their odd prison. Solar panels covered a sloping section of the roof. A strange construction of metal flaps sat opposite, looking like a flower open to the sun. And starting just inches from Rett’s fingers was a series of rungs leading over the rounded edge of the building. “We could climb down,” he said. “It’s not far. We could walk there easily.”

  Bryn gazed into the distance, her eyes fogged. Rett touched her hand, trying to call her back. “Something’s out there,” Bryn said. “Do you feel it?”

  Rett tried to open himself to whatever she was sensing. He smelled sulfur and rust and the mineral smell of fresh rain on dirt. He thought he could hear a clicking or pattering from somewhere below—the rain, falling on rock and metal.

  He glanced back inside and saw with a start that the water level had gone down a couple of feet. “Bryn.” Now he could hear the distant suck of water in pipes. “The water’s going down.”

  Bryn snapped her head around to look.

  “We have to jump back in before it gets any lower,” Rett said. He nodded at the rungs set into the side of the building. “Unless you’d rather take the ladder?”

  Bryn considered for a moment while Rett watched the water line fall and tried to come to his own decision. “The river might be the only drinking water we find,” Bryn said. “But if we climb down now, we’ll never be able to get back inside the shelter without the water to break our fall.”